Orchards of fruit trees typically need to be thinned. Thinning is needed in fruit trees such as apple, pear, peach, orange, grapefruit and others because the fruit when fully developed may weigh more than the tree will support. Thinning is also employed to allow the better and healthier fruits to develop to a larger size. Such larger sized fruit frequently bring a better price for the grower.
One problem which has long troubled orchardists is the damage which occurs to fruit which remains on the tree as a result of the thinning process. For example, in the growing of apples it is usually necessary to employ human pickers to work in the trees and remove excess apples while the apples are still small. However, it is difficult for the pickers who remove the smaller apples in the thinning process to discard the thinned fruit without hitting apples which are to remain on the trees until harvest. When a thinned apple is discarded so as to strike a remaining apple, the remaining apple is bruised. The bruise may not even show at that time because of the hardness of the unripened apple. However, at harvest time the bruise will be apparent and will cause the bruised apple to be downgraded. This causes the grower to lose money.
Thus there has been a long-felt need in the fruit orchard industry for improved apparatus which can be used in the thinning of fruit to reduce the incidence of bruising caused by discard of fruit being thinned.